the makeover; almond butter and jam breakfast cake
Is there anyone who doesn’t get a thrill out of watching a good makeover scene? As a teen I can say for sure that all my favorite movies were ones with makeover scenes (but don’t tell that to The Lives of Others, which held place of pride as my favorite movie on facebook). What are the best, most iconic, makeover scenes? I rewatched Miss Congeniality a few years ago based on my memory of the makeover scene alone—it did not hold up as a movie, but the makeover scene still delivers, in all of its highly Problematic glory. A makeover scene can be anything, I think when they create their new routines in Magic Mike XXL it’s a sort of makeover scene. When they show a montage of someone learning kung fu in a 90s action movie, those are makeovers too. Mulan’s “Be a Man?” definitely a makeover, actually that movie is basically all makeovers. But the scenes that involve getting a “ugly” or “normal” teen getting her makeup done and then being “hot” or “a literal princess” hold a special place in my heart.
The promise, and premise, of a teen movie makeover scene is that somewhere out there exists an exact script for womanhood, and it is brilliantly clear. In this fiction, you take off your glasses, you get a blow out, and suddenly you’ve done it. You not only fit into the idea of the high school pretty girls, you also have cracked the code of understanding. Once you get your first keratin treatment and manicure, even once the polish chips, you still understand how to get back there. You have made womanhood attainable and legible.
The week before I started 8th grade I decided to give myself a makeover. I don’t think I’ve told anyone this story before, but you know, it feels right. 8th grade was about to start, and for the first time ever 5th graders were being included in the middle school at the K-8 I went to. This, for some reason, really chafed. So I had this idea, at least as I told my friends, that I would try to “scare” the 5th graders on the first day of school. (I was blissfully unaware at the time that my heinous personality scares new acquaintances perfectly well on its own.) My idea for intimidating these children was… to try to go full mall goth. I got a pair of those black pants with like, random bits of metal on them? I found them at the thrift store, and I wore them with this weird grey vest I had and some sort of black shirt and of course, my trusty black kangol cap. I might have tried to wear makeup, as I had some that I’d stolen from being in the school play the spring before (a different sort of makeover there, where I was cast as a seductress with a solo number despite being entirely awkward and unable to sing). This wasn’t a successful makeover, a makeover has to be done to you.
One of the things that my mother has always held above me to “prove” her theory that I am not really trans was my interest in “girl things” as a high schooler and college student. I mean, yeah. I was fascinated by girl things, because as a good researcher I thought I could make being a “girl” make sense. I think a lot of trans people are fascinated by gender. It’s so strange! Look at these things we do! Look at what other people think I am if I do one thing instead of another. When you’re young, and sheltered, and don’t know that trans people exist, what is there to do but look at makeover scenes in movies, and imagine the day that it will happen to you?
I spent years imagining the ways that this could happen to me. Would it be when my girl friends took me to the mall to buy a push up bra? Would it be when my friend dyed my hair after school? Would it be the haircut an older (edgier) girl gave me at quaker youth group? Maybe it would be on tumblr, where I spent years looking at makeup, and trying to recreate the perfect smoky eye.
I made (part) of a video game as my grad school capstone, it was hard, and I didn’t make it far, but I did make it far enough to talk about my teen love for old self help books for women. I had one from my grandmother called “Glorify Yourself” which I particularly loved. A friend of mine played the game (flattering!!) and mentioned that she too loved this sort of thing growing up, and that she identified a lot with the feelings of gender confusion that I felt as a young person. In her case, the difference was that she is a woman, but she was Chinese, growing up in all-white New Zealand. The strictness of White Girlhood that she was surrounded by created a similar sort of feeling within her, gender dysphoria in a sense, but as a result not of being trans, but being racially othered, and not seeing her own gender reflected in the girls around her.
Tianwei, who makes the great drawings that I sometimes share (such as the one above), also loved these sorts of books that tell you how to be a gender, because she was looking for answers too. For both of us, a part of the answer could only be found by leaving the place we had grown up, and meeting more people, and seeing more genders.
Other Writing in Other Places
Is this a new section? Who knows! I wrote about positive masculinity and narratives of fatherhood for Kickout 2.99, I hope you check it out!
Also read me and many other funnier and smarter people in 2fast2trans, a trans zine about the fast and the furious franchise. You don’t have to be trans OR have seen all the movies for it to be good, promise! Also happy Fast10 day!!!!
Anyway this recipe is sort of a makeover too….
I am always making breakfast cake recipes, because I want to be someone who eats a nutritious breakfast and is Sustained by it, not someone who is wandering around ravenous an hour or two after I eat. My horrible psychiatrist told me to use myfitness pal for a while to track my eating (THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT) and mostly it seems like this is an app designed to give you an eating disorder, but it was useful to see “oh I could probably be eating more protein.” I don’t suggest using something like this, I dislike the way that it has made me think about food for the last week. But whatever this recipe came from that experiment and is a result of me trying to pound some protein (it still doesn’t have that much tbh, but I added a Nut Butter and Jam layer to the middle, so that’s Protein in addition to, imo, being a sort of fun twist on the usual baked oatmeal/breakfast bread situation.)
(almond) butter and jelly (jam) breakfast cake
Ingredients:
Dry
2 cups (240 g) rolled oats
1 cup (150 g) whole wheat flour
1/2 cup (65 g) almond meal (optional)
1 tbs cinnamon
1/8 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Wet
6 tbs butter (or oil of your choice!)
1 cup milk (non-dairy or real)
2 large eggs (vegan substitute is fine, I’m sure)
1/4 cup (80 g) honey (unless you’re….. bee-gan…. sorry sorry I’ll take myself out)
1 tsp vanilla
Everything else
1 cup blueberries (I used frozen wild blueberries because they were on sale, like, five months ago)
4 tbs (75 g almond butter)
2 tbs yogurt (yeah kind of random, but you could almost certainly use something else)
1/4 cup jam, any kind, I used raspberry, use whatever you like in a PB&J
some toasted nuts for on top
Christ almighty this is a long ingredient list! Good lord, sorry. Alternations: you could almost certainly leave out the almond meal, it adds a little bit of softness and variety, but isn’t necessary. The flour could be white, but for me breakfast bread has to have whole wheat flour, idk it’s the law. If you wanted baked oatmeal instead (idk you might) leave out the flour and use 3 cups rolled oats. Coriander also is optional, but it 🌟brightens🌟 the taste of blueberries. You could use a larger amount of both nut butter and jelly, but I ran out of almond butter, so I used 4 tbs. It’s already pretty thick, so I might not add more, but would consider more jelly or jam, especially if you want it a bit sweeter. I might consider using just over a third cup of jam and (gasp) leaving out the blueberries, as I’m not sure they really added much!
Okay preparation: preheat oven to 350. Line an 8 inch square pan with parchment, and then grease whatever part isn’t covered.
Mix the dry stuff in one bowl, mix the wet stuff in another (use a glass measuring cup or something and you can melt the butter and then mix the milk and eggs in with it.) In a small bowl make the almond goop (tm) by, uh, mixing it until it seems like it could be spreadable. (Not an exact science). It might be nice to add a splash of almond or vanilla extract in here.
Add wet stuff into dry stuff, mix well. Add the blueberries, mix some more.
Put half of the mix into the pan. Spread it out. Drop the almond goop in, use a chopstick or skewer to sqoogle it around. In a sort of alternating way, add the jam. Sqoogle that as well. Add the other half of the cake mix. Spread out. Add nuts on top, if you like.
Keep in the refrigerator for a few days, reheat it in the microwave or oven, it would not be good cold. Add some yogurt or whatever for EVEN MORE PROTEIN and get those sick gains.